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Rescuers Prep for Hybrid Car Accidents
mykepredko writes "I've driven a Toyota Prius for two years now and found this CNN article regarding the training required to rescue people trapped in hybrid cars to be slightly alarming. As an EE, I would expect that the electrical system is designed to be as well protected and fail-safe as possible in an accident, but if I'm ever in an accident, I'll make sure that any responders are wearing rubber gloves and boots and if any cutting is done, the roof is the only area they touch." Toyota has an accident guide indicating that if the airbags deploy, the hybrid battery pack should be automatically isolated.
I have heard that electrical wiring in the new hybrids run through all sorts of places, including roof and roof posts.
I have also heard of their being multiple batteries.
Also, some new mini-van with a glass roof has extra reinforced roof posts that my fire dept's hydraulic cutting tools cound't cut.
Finally, the presence of air bags everywhere all over the car frame is great, they can explode at random times.
New cars are making it really hard to get people out of them safely after an accident.
Programming is simply the application of logic to creativity
As an EMT, I pulled a great many conscious people out of cars. Now, sometimes I wished they had been knocked out ... "Yes, damn it, we're going to get you out of the car, and you're going to be okay, now would you please hold still and shut up!"
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Yes, and in other accidents the gas tank could blow up, yada yada. I'm curious about battery acid myself.
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And this is opposed to the safety of an internal combustion engine?
Where any accident will involve the spraying and leaking of a dozen gallons if highly flammable fluid?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
You turkey, that's not what it says :)
Though that is a very intersting point that I hadn't thought of. I've been looking to build an electric (only) powered car to get me to work and back, to save wear and tear on my gasoline powered car (and so if it breaks, I have another way to get to work) and to "Save the Environment!"(tm).
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Why not an electric toothbrush, or electric mixer? Come on, the Enterprise is in space, it doesn't actually make sound! ;)
The Shadow vessel scream from B5! That'll wake you cyclists up!
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
That's cool! They should add sound effects for other operations like when the door is opened or closed it could sound like a garbage truck deploying it's automated can picker-upper-dumper. Hit the fuel door release and it makes a gurgling sound.
"They know not to cut into a hybrid's doors -- that's where many of the cables are --" Why in the world would there be high voltage in the doors? Maybe they mean the door sills? Or did Toyota save a buck by standardizing all their motors on 500V?
Anyone driving a vehicle which is sufficiently loud (e.g. cycle with loud pipes) to prevent others from hearing the quieter vehicles should be subjected to immediate confiscation of their sonic assault weapon. This would have the worthwhile effect of turning the ex-driver into a pedestrian, so that they could appreciate the hazards of overly loud vehicles from the opposite perspective.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I had pre-airbags 1980's Saab 9000 that that had explosive charges on the seat belt mounts in the door pillars intended to tighten the seat belts at the moment of impact.
Both door posts had warning stickers not to crush the car or bad things would happen.
I guess the junkyard crushing machine operators got occassional surprises!
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Last year, the Rallye International de Quebec, up in Quebec City (which I'm sure most of you could've guessed from the name), had a Toyota Prius rally car running. Toyota was doing in the CARS series to show off that their hybrids could hold up to that kind of abuse.
The car sucked... badly... in almost all of the stages, because it was really fast for the first mile or two until it ran out of battery, and then the dinky motor wouldn't be able to give it enough power to keep up with anyone.
There was one stage at the hippodrome, though, where they were running a mile or so course on a twisty infield and part of a horse track. It was very competitive on there. It was so surreal though to have one roaring rally car after another go flying by, and then when the Prius ran, the first car went screaming by, followed a bit later by the Prius -- where all you could hear was the tires on the dirt/gravel.
The diesel in the VW is proven technology, but I was also worried about how the hybrids would be in an accident. Plus, the Golf TDI runs like an NBA player from his kids' wives. I know it will go 125MPH, but I was still accelerating when I decided to back off.
The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
Copyright 2004 Exxon Mobile. All rights reserved. This material may be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The reality:
ChevronTexaco is an investor in ECD Ovonics - the company that owns the popular NiMH battery technology that is popular in hybrid autos. Toyota gets their NiMH batteries from Matsushita/Panasonic, who are conveniently not paying the 3 percent royalty. So, the two companies have been tied up in the courts for years now battling this out. Last year, they moved into arbitration and that will be released this month. Although it was wrong for Matsushita to steal the technology, it is going to look bad when Toyota hybrids are banned from importation due to a lawsuit coming from a ChevronTexaco joint-venture.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Diesel fuel is a lot safer in that respect. A freind of mine who drove a diesel car was in an accident once, and he and his girlfriend had to be cut out. If they'd been driving a petrol car there'd have been a bigger chance that they'd have been burned to a crisp.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Happened to a friend of mine when I was about 10 or so. Funny at the time, but he was pissed... in more ways than you know.
Karma: Can there be a void?
.. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...
Those batteries can be pretty nasty. I'm not just talking the battery Acid either. Some of the batteries in electric cars have to be heated to 200 degrees to work properly. And a lot of them contain some pretty nasty and toxic chemicals. Far worse than gasoline.
And if they explode due to a short or a fire, they'll not only act like shrapnel, but very poisonous shrapnel. I wonder if there are any safety regs dealing with this subject?
As an EE, I would expect that the electrical system is designed to be as well protected and fail-safe as possible, but...
As an intelligent human being, I'd expect a micro-car full of batteries to be likely to kill anyone stupid enough to ground on it after it has been mangled in a wreck. As someone having no overt desire to drive a giant battery, I have no reason to pretend otherwise. As a thoughtful individual, I won't be surprised when CNN points out how high pressure Hydrogen tanks are also an extreme hazard in accidents, and some other xE is astonished by the consequences of his eco-choice.
We have been refining automotive internal combustion systems for about a century. Everyone involved, from mechanics and insurance adjusters to rescue personnel, has an inherent understanding of the dangers. No great evolutionary change in our species has occurred during that time; we're still the same super-brained primates we were back then. So it stands to reason that we're going to have to learn the lessons in order to cope with these new machines, and that we'll do it the hard way; one nasty wreck after another...
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Ironically, you're probably right, they need some sort of "white noise" or wuwuwuwuwuwwuwu sound so that us humans aren't messed up by the lack of sound coming from the machines. Telephone lines have, since the invention of the telophone practically, had a feedback loop which directs a little bit of the signal noise on the line back through the receiver. Even in this age of digital communications where lossless line communications (i.e. zero noise on the line) is more than possible, phone companies still inject just enough noise on the line. Why? Because people need to hear at least a low volume of 'noise' or else they think something is wrong.
Maybe the bigger and badder the machine (i.e. cars and planes and stuff), the more noise is needed as an indicator of imminent danger if I don't get out of its way?
. . . my Volvo 240 from the 80s. It gets better gas mileage than the SUVs of today, and if I'm in an accident, I hopefully won't need responders or anyone else to cut me out.
.)
The IIHS ranked the 240 #1 due to 0 fatalities per 100,000 cars from 1988 to 1993.
(It's not like the rescuers could cut through all the Swedish steel anyway . .
Extended comments at Gizmodo makes it clear that this is 99% rumor/FUD.
Thanks for the info! I was almost thinking about reconsidering my plans to buy a Prius later this year, then I thought about how unlikely it would be to route lossy high-voltage the long way around the frame. Then I saw your link, and that sealed it -- I'm getting a Prius first chance I get.
I'm just afraid folks will fall for it like they've fallen for the cellphones at gas stations myth. Every gas pump in Texas has a label perpetuating this silliness!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
500 volts? 45 volts is enough to kill you... at 10 amperes!
Seriously, aren't we nerds, or something?!
Apparently not as much of a nerd as you'd like to think, since you forgot to factor in frequency and duration.
High currents can be passed through (over) the human body at higher frequency a) because they tend to travel over the surface of the body and b) because the nervous system is less likely to react to frequencies 100Hz and upwards.
Also, you really should have mentioned duration, since this governs the energy delivered (which is, after all, what causes the most physical damage). Energy is Voltage * Current * Time. Electric fencers operate in the kV range, but only(!) deliver a few joules.
dumb-asses
Back at ya. ;)
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My CD player was still playing White Zombie (on two 10" subs) long after I got into a wreck in my 91 Honda CRX. After the police showed up to investigate, one of the officers had my walk back to my car and turn that shit off. Oh well, must have been too much tension in the air for music.
Life is not for the lazy.
500 volts is more than enough to 'overcome' natural skin resistance. 10,000 volts at a few milliamps is not enough to do more than tickle. 10,000 volts at a few Amps, will turn you into bacon.
40 times the strength? they might mean that the batteries are 40x the amperage of a regular car battery (in my truck, that is 750Amps.) In other words combined to be about 30,000 Amps.
Yes, I certainly would be -very- concerned at 500V/30,000 amps potential. drop -ANY- metal piece across open contacts of that potential, and you've got one quickly vaporized metal thing.
As I've always told the mantra as it was told to me. Volts Hurt, Amps Kill. 500V at even 1 Amp is enough to severely kill you.
Judging from http://techinfo.toyota.com's 2004 Prius responder guide, Toyota has been quite responsible in routing the cables under the floor pan, where emergency responders are unlikely to need to go. The system is also designed with a relay powered by the 12 volt auxiliary battery that the car's computer has to enable in order for the high voltage lines to be energized. If the car deploys its air bags, that relay is designed to open, disconnecting the high voltage pack from the rest of the car.
In other words, it doesn't sound as though Toyota are being morons about the whole thing.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Don't take my word for it. Check out this article, which appeared in the New Yorker magazine few months back.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Don't know if you're serious or not. But this is a bad idea.
A lot of accidents (I don't know the percentage but I'm sure its most) happen at intercetions. And that usually means traffic lights. Ejection seats would have a very good chance of shooting a guy right up into one. Not to mention trees, buildings, and a whole bunch of other things that are along the side of the roadway.
Another problem is that if any part of the system fails then the ejector is a going to be in a world of hurt. One of the many reasons a combat pilot wears a crash helmet in his fighter is because if he has to eject and the canopy doesn't go, the helmet helps him get through the glass. You're not going to get everyone in cars wearing crash helmets.
Say the car is flipped over and the ejector is automatically turned off, and the car is onfire. You now have a person strapped into a chair with alot of very explosive rocket fuel right next to his butt.
That brings up the nice nifty seatbelts. The standard lap and shoulder restraints aren't going to do for an ejector seat, and we have enough problems getting people to use the seatbelts as they are.
Also while driving a person's seat is usually partially under the steering wheel, and the legs under the dashboard to get to the pedals. An auto ejection won't allow a person to clear those obsticals before he is rocketed through them.
Multiple people in the car will also be a problem. You can't fire the seats all at once because the parachutes would get fouled on each other. But then you can't fire them independently because the people remaining in the car will get burned by the rocket exhaust. You can't fire them all of in different angles because that increases the chance of lauching a person into a building, or high voltage line.
I'm sure there are more problems with putting ejector seats in cars then these.
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I'm a volunteer FF, and we get LOTS of training on how to properly cut up cars, especially the new ones that are more deadly to us trying to rescue you, than they are to you and your 60mph argument with a tree.
Insane numbers of airbags, compressed gas cylinders strategicly located in our best cutting points, airbags that don't always go off, and therefore might go off at any point in time while we're cutting the car apart.
And now they're adding several hundred volts to the mix.
Luckily we don't need to cut through the center of the floor boards very often (common wiring route for the big linces).
But then, the automotive companies don't seem to have concern for making a car that's easy to cut apart. They main focus on not killing you in the first place.
The Mini's are the most impressive I've seen. 60mph into a telephone pole (annihalated the pole), and then into a redwood tree. No broken glass, but the engine compartment was demolished. Incredible how much energy it soaked up, without harming anything past the firewall. Too bad it caught fire as the gas tank was torn open by the bottom of the telephone poll...
Yes, and an alkaline "D" cell can put out over 10 amps, at 1.5 volts. Considering the lethal current is 30 milliamps, you'd think people would be dropping dead all the time from putting batteries in their flashlights.
The thing is, you have to have:
1) A current source that can provide the lethal amount.
2) A voltage source that can provide enough voltage to push said current through your chest area (heart).
The resistance of your body depends on several things: Hydration, surface conductivity (sweat), body composition (fat vs muscle). My old electronics safety classes taught that as little as 30 volts can be lethal under the right conditions.
Electric fences (and static electricty) provide very high voltages, but only for an instant, and at very low currents.
I have heard from my friends in the automotive industry (take that vague description FWIW) that the trend is for all vehicles, not just hybrid and electric vehicles, to move towards drive-by-wire systems over the next ten years or so. So any rescue problems that a Prius will have, so could any other motor vehicle. This isn't going to stop me from buying a Prius or Civic Hybrid next time I'm in the market for a car.
Did you hear? There are conveyances that carry TOXIC, FLAMMABLE fuel in LARGE TANKS and in HOSES from the tank to the engine!!! If the conveyances get hit, there could be an EXPLOSION!! If I'm in an accident, I'll make sure that any responders are wearing fireproof hazmat suits, and if any cutting is done, the roof is the only area they touch!
Yeah, right.
It is difficult, but possible, to have the electric motor run out of juice.
Flooring the thing for a few miles would probably do it. I remember taking the bugger to 100 and that engine was working way too hard to fuel the electric battery.
The one time I ran out of juice from normal usage was going through Western New Mexico to Albuquerque with no stops. There is a long incline going into the city after a slight incline over the whole trip. The car wasn't ready for it and had to slow down to 55.
Yes, that motor is only good enough to keep you sustained at 55 by itself.
(Note: I still heartily reccomend the car for most everyone, and the 2004 model has a higher HP gas engine so I'm sure the problem isn't pronounced.)
Absolutely right. Body path is the real key - the values given there were mostly (I suspect) wrt to direct application to the heart. At least I hope so, I've received a lot of shocks at 12-24v+ & 200ma+ and gotten little other than a tingle. I've also been 110'ed a few times and a couple higher, but not cross body thank Bog! :) although one 220 across my hand left me with a couple nice burn scars, and hurt worse later on than at the time.
:) Good thing I was pretty young, probably would kill me nowadays...
Actually the worst one I ever received was cross-body ?v at ?mA - from the spark plug wires on an older truck when I brushed my forearm against a couple wires - I was soaked to the skin, playing with the carburetor settings on an old Dodge truck. The plug wires were also soaked. Didn't knock me down but it hurt like hell for a second or so until my arm lost contact with the wires. The only place I was "grounded" was my other forearm resting on the edge of the engine compartment. Slight burns in both places where my bare arms were touching.
That one sucked a lot more than the couple of 110v I got. I went inside and quite literally had the twitches for a while. There is no sensation that is even slightly like it. In hindsight later that night I realized I should have known that the slight glow around the wiring was arcing along the wires due to the rain coating them. Those buggers have a lot of voltage running thru them. Learned a good lesson there, I did.
Long time ago, but I can still remember how much that one hurt...moral of the story is, don't fuck around a open engine compartment with the motor running when you and it are both soaked by rain
Don't tell me I'm a lucky bastard, I know it already...
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Actually, older cars were bricks that just transfered the energy directly to the interior (think billiard balls).
Newer cars have "crush zones", and a prime example is the Mini. Head-first into an immovable object and it crumples away, slowing the car gradually, as the front of the car crushes.
The trick is getting it just right. To soft, and you crush the occupants. Too hard, and it's not useful.
They've been slowly getting there over the years.
The focus of the manufacturers IS actually major impacts, and not small impacts. The car is meant to be totalled with as little damage to the occupants as possible.
I've seen several head-on into trees that totalled the car, and the driver walked away without a scratch. An impact that in an older car (or a full-size truck) could have seriously injured the people inside.
That's not quite the story.
Panasonic/Matsushita, like every other NiMH battery licensee, pays all their royalties to Ovonics. If they had not, Ovonics could have actually blocked the import of the Prius to the USA. Unlike most of the licensees, they've done their own share of improvements to the technology, and have their own patent portfolio.
The thing with Panasonic and Ovonics is not the royalties per se, but the patent license itself. Ovonics has had no interest in making D-Cells, they were, from the start, after the Hybrid car market... only it didn't quite exist. At the time Toyota started work on the Prius, and even until recently, Ovonics was only R&D, no production facilities at all. Their NiMH license was for small cells only: AAs, Cs, Ds, cellphone and laptop batteries, but not the giant cells you'd need for Hybrid cars.
So Panasonic and Toyota got together on this, and built a hybrid anyway. The original (1997-2000) Prius actually used plain old everyday high-output D-Cells. For the 2001-2003 model, Panasonic supplied prismatic cells in packs of six, to Toyota. They, in turn, not being subject to any legal agreement between Panasonic and Ovonics, built up 38 of these (28 in the 2004 model) and voila -- hybrid power pack.
So basically, it sounds like Panasonic had smarter lawyers than Ovonics. The main focus of the lawsuit by Ovonics was to prevent Panasonic from doing similar things in deals with Ford or GM, in any hybrid projects they had in the works. As well, it's likely they were after some of the Panasonic technology -- Panasonic has the highest output cells, by far, of any NiMH vendor.
And it's also a limited time thing... Li-Ions or Li-Polys are likely to take over in the hybrid market, once they figure out how to keep them alive for 150,000 miles. And, I suppose, ensure they won't spontaneouslyh explode.
Honda, an investor in Ovonics, apparently doesn't have any issue. But they make very weak hybrids anyway. The Toyota system is much cooler... and I'm not just saying that as a 2003 Prius owner.
-Dave Haynie
Care to back this up?
In reality, you are off by an order of magnitute. Accoridng to a government source, you actually get 10 MPG in the city, and 14 MPG on the highway. The gas mileage on that vehicle with E85 is actually worse than gasoline.
The only advantage of that alternative fuel in that vehicle is it reduces the polution index. You burn more fuel but you put out less pollution.
Perhaps you are really just someone who desperately wants to justify a vastly oversized vehicle that they likely do not need. What is it with Americans and our intense desire to take up more space and resources than anyone else?
For the record, I drive a 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid. Its battery package is safely enclosed in a Kelvar shell that prevents leakage in the event of an accident. If the car is mangled enough that the back-half of the vehicle is ripped apart length-wise, there is no need to rescue me because the car would have to be beyond recognition. The electrical system also has plenty of failsafes to prevent dangerous shocks. Overall and on average, my vehicle is no more a liability to others in an accident than any other car.
And no matter what you say, SUVs remain a tremendous threat to those with smaller vehicles on the road. No amount of nonsense, canned responses, or irrational whims will change the laws of physics.
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